A wide variety of tools are used in the oil and gas industry for forming wellbores, in completing drilled wellbores, and in producing hydrocarbons such as oil and gas from completed wells. Examples of these tools include cutting tools, such as drill bits, reamers, stabilizers, and coring bits; drilling tools, such as rotary steerable devices and mud motors; and other tools, such as window mills, tool joints, and other wear-prone tools. These tools, and several other types of tools outside the realm of the oil and gas industry, are often formed as metal matrix composites (MMCs), and referred to herein as “MMC tools.”
An MMC tool is typically manufactured by infiltrating a powder matrix reinforcement material with a binder material, such as a metallic alloy, which provided a more solid resulting structure. More particularly, manufacturing an MMC tool includes depositing matrix reinforcement material into a mold designed to form various external and internal features of the MMC tool. Interior surfaces of the mold cavity, for example, may be shaped to form desired external features of the MMC tool, and temporary displacement materials, such as consolidated sand or graphite, may be positioned within interior portions of the mold cavity to form various internal (or external) features of the MMC tool. Following the infiltration process, the temporary displacement materials may be removed from the mold. A quantity of the binder material is then added to the mold cavity and the mold is then placed within a furnace and the temperature of the mold is increased to a temperature that liquefies the binder material and thereby allows the binder to infiltrate interstitial spaces between reinforcing particles of the matrix reinforcement material.
While MMC drill bits are generally erosion-resistant and exhibit high impact strength, drilling operations cause outer surfaces of MMC drill bits to gradually wear and erode through continued abrasive contact with the underlying subterranean formations. With typical matrix materials, once a critical erosion depth for a reinforcing particle is reached, impact events associated with drilling cause the reinforcing particle to be dislodged (i.e., extracted) from its location within the softer binder material. Since reinforcing particles are typically harder and more erosion-resistant than binder materials, it may be advantageous to enhance the bonding between the reinforcing particles and the binder material to provide a more cohesive MMC material and thereby reduce the propensity for reinforcing particles to be dislodged from the binder material.